


looking right at the other half of me

by Shommey99



Series: the vacancy that sat in my heart (is a space that now you hold) [2]
Category: Life with Derek
Genre: Casey Centric, F/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29646609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shommey99/pseuds/Shommey99
Summary: Upon discovering that Derek is her soulmate, Casey goes through the five stages of grief.
Relationships: Casey McDonald/Derek Venturi
Series: the vacancy that sat in my heart (is a space that now you hold) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174151
Comments: 17
Kudos: 47





	looking right at the other half of me

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. Here are some of Casey's scattered thoughts from 'or should I just keep chasing pavements'. If you didn't read that one, just imagine that in a world where the name of your soulmate is imprinted on your skin, Derek doesn't have any marks.
> 
> Title comes from Justin Timberlake’s song ‘Mirrors’. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

It starts with the dreams. Good dreams, bad dreams, strange dreams… _uncomfortable_ dreams.

She didn’t think it was all that weird before Thursday night, because… Dreaming about him every night, it wasn’t _that_ strange, was it? 

Monday, his parents send him away to military school, and she gets his room and transforms it into whatever she wants. The dream is good; not even Marti seems to miss him, but she still wakes up before dawn and opens the vent next to her bed and strains her ears, waiting until she hears him snoring softly so she can go back to sleep. 

Tuesday, he’s making dinner for her in an apartment she’s never been in before but sees very vividly, and then forgets about. Awake, she wonders where in the world that apartment was and why it felt like home.

Wednesday, he chases her around with a huge tarantula, and she runs through the house, rushing through endless doors, heart hammering and his laughter loud in her ears, and she can’t afford to slow down for just a second lest he actually catches her. She wakes up in a cold sweat, feeling tingly all over, and she has to check under the sheets in case there are actual bugs in her bed.

Thursday, she’s in his room, and they are arguing and he’s getting closer, and this time she doesn’t want to run, but she’s inching backwards while he cages her in, until her back collides with his closed door. And then he’s leaning so close she can feel his breath on her lips, and then – 

Thursday she doesn’t write about in her dream diary. Thursday she doesn’t ever want to think about again.

.

.

.

She’s showering Friday morning, a headache killing her slowly, and she’s going to be _so_ late for school. She grabs her scented soap and runs it soothingly over her arms and stomach, and then –

– then she freezes. Because her mark… it looks bolder, blacker, _different_. She stares at it, shocked, the stream of the shower blurring her vision, the writing upside down on her ribs and partially concealed by her left breast, impossible for her to decipher. And then her brain clicks, and she’s dropping the soap and wrenching the curtain open, falling out of the bath tub and taking the curtain down with her, splitting her knee open painfully against the floor tiles. 

She stands up on shaky legs, naked and shivering in the cold, blood running down her calf and toes scrunching up against the wet floor. She looks for her reflection in the mirror. 

“Casey?” Lizzie’s concerned voice comes from the other side of the closed door, “Are you okay, what was that noise?”

“I’m fine,” she replies, voice shaking. The mirror is all foggy with the steam from the shower, and she hastily turns around and shuts off the flow of water. Her eyes ignore the absolute mess she’s made.

She eagerly walks towards the mirror and uses her towel to clean the condensation off. Her eyes fall to her mark.

She stares at it, unseeing for a second. 

When her brain finally catches on what she’s seeing, the name clear as day and oh, _so_ familiar, she can’t help but scream, horrified. 

“Casey!” Lizzie shouts. The doorknob starts to turn and Casey throws herself against the door, slamming it closed when her sister opens it just a smidge.

“Go away!” she cries, her breath ragged.

Lizzie’s voice rises, terrified. “Casey, what’s going on? Are you okay? I’m scared.”

Casey blinks through shocked tears. “Please don’t open the door.”

“I won’t,” her sister reassures.

“My mark cleared,” she says, voice breaking. 

She can hear Lizzie’s sharp intake of breath. And then there are more concerned voices outside the door – Marti’s voice, Edwin’s voice, _his_ voice.

“GO AWAY!” Casey screams again, banging her fist against the door.

She turns back towards the mirror, both hands coming up to grip at her soggy hair. Maybe she had seen wrong? Maybe it was her mind playing tricks on her, along with the weird dream _(his hands, his lips, his ragged breathing)_

Maybe she’s still dreaming.

Casey pinches herself on the arm, but the image on the mirror is still the same. Spelled backwards on her skin in bold black letters, the name is still the same.

**Derek Venturi**

.

.

.

**1\. Denial**

She avoids them all for a week. She still holds on to hope that she will wake up. That her mark will still be blurred and this is all just a terrible, sick dream. 

Her mother is worried, follows her with concerned eyes every move she makes. She closes herself away from all of them, especially _him_.

Every time she sees him, with his annoying smirk, her stomach churns and she breaks out into a cold sweat. This surely can’t be what the universe has planned for her. What had she done to deserve such punishment? 

She’s sneaking out of her room to go to the bathroom, and collides against him in the hallway. He catches her with both hands on her arms, his warmth seeping through her clothes onto her skin.

“I see getting a soulmate doesn’t erase the klutziness.”

She makes the mistake of looking up at his face, and although there’s mockery there, she also sees something else – a slight frown, his mouth a little turned down. 

_Concern._

She feels a little tug at her heart and she shakes her head to get rid of the feeling, sidestepping him to head to the bathroom. 

“Casey.” She hears him call. She locks the bathroom door. 

When she lifts her shirt, the name is still the same. She leans her head against the door and waits for her heartbeat to slow down. 

.

.

.

**2\. Anger**

She used to believe in destiny. She used to believe destiny was kind to those who were kind, that everything was written beforehand in the cosmos, and that her destiny would be as bright and good as she was.

Her destiny would be a charming boy with a sharp brain and a gentle heart.

Her destiny would be a pretty girl with big dreams and strong resolve.

But in reality? 

She looks at Destiny right in the eyes every morning over breakfast. Destiny trips her in the hallways at school and calls her names and pranks her every week.

And Casey? She wears his name like a stake of claim everywhere she goes. 

Her shirt stops coming off during dates, she can’t risk anyone from school knowing. Eventually, things get really strained with Max. He thinks she’s changed, and she has. She’s changed in more ways than Max can notice. She’s losing herself, and she can’t take this anymore. So even if she really likes him, she knows something’s got to give. She goes for a break and he goes for a break up, and that’s it. 

When she comes back home and sees Derek lounging lazily on his recliner, she disconnects the TV as she passes.

“HEY! What the hell’s gotten into you?”

 _You_ , Casey thinks at him, on her way upstairs. She slams her bedroom door, practically yanks her cheerleading outfit off her body and tosses it in the garbage under her desk.

She writes seven separate angry poems that night, but she doesn’t read them aloud at the Poetry Club’s next meeting. 

.

.

.

**3\. Bargaining**

Okay, so the name is still the same, that’s not going to change. She has officially convinced herself that this is not a never-ending nightmare, she’s not in a comma, and she’s not going to wake up and have Derek Venturi’s name off her skin. 

But, what tells her that everything is as horrible as she thinks it is? 

Maybe there’s another Derek Venturi in the world, and Casey just has the worst luck ever? Because if Derek doesn’t have a mark, then it’s entirely possible that the name in hers is someone else’s. And what were the chances, really? That she’d move into the same house as her soulmate? That her soulmate is her _step-brother_? That’s too much of a coincidence, so obviously it could be someone else.

She gets on the internet and looks for other Derek Venturi’s. No such luck. On Facebook, she finds that there is one in Italy, but he has ‘Dante’ as a middle name… also, he’s 68 years old, so… yeah, _no_. 

She researches soulmates instead, the cases of people born without marks. It turns out that the small percentage of them who actually got one after birth, got it during their first years of life. No teenager or adult without a mark has ever gotten one later on in life… _yet_. 

And this is what _really_ hurts her: there is not a single documented case of their name being on someone else’s skin either. They live their entire lives without a soulmate or expecting one. 

Yet, the name on her skin is Derek Venturi.

So… if Derek _is_ her soulmate, but he doesn’t have a mark of his own… is _she_ anybody’s soulmate? Does anyone have her name on their skin? 

Or is she alone too? 

.

.

.

**4\. Depression**

It’s not that she doesn’t notice. The glances, the touches, the feelings he provokes in her.

It’s not like she doesn’t close her eyes and sees his smile behind her eyelids, or feels her heart tug proudly every time she makes him laugh, or files away the way he looks at her and keeps it in a box of ‘what ifs’ inside her head.

She knows, okay? She knows what’s happening to her.

She realizes that he’s not as bad as she had once thought. Quite the opposite, she discovered that he can be disarmingly sweet, that he’s capable of doing great things for the people he cares about. That there is hardly anything he’s bad at, that he doesn’t really have any significant flaws at all.

All in all, having someone like Derek Venturi as her soulmate isn’t half bad. 

The thing is, he’s still her step-brother. And she’s still the step-sister he never wanted. It doesn’t help that she doesn’t see any indication that he can feel even a little of what she’s starting to feel for him.

(Because hormones are not the same as feelings. Because the touches and the glances have always been there, but they don’t affect him like they affect her, he doesn’t change the way she does)

And she still has to watch him give his all to someone else. Sally, Emily, Roxy, whoever’s the next to come. 

All those smiles, looks, kisses, he reserves for everyone else – aren’t those supposed to be for her? Isn’t it Casey that has his name on her skin? 

She can’t help but feel cheated, because – 

_He’s mine._

She wants to scream. 

Deep down, she realizes that Derek doesn’t have anything tying him to anyone, his skin is clear, he is free.

Emily thinks that him not having a mark only makes him hotter, more unattainable in an ‘everyone wants him, but no one can truly have him’ kind of way. 

The thing is, Casey had always thought that it was sad, because he can’t ever truly have anyone either. Every person he loves will always belong with someone else.

Now she wonders what he would feel, if he knew. Would it give him a thrill? Knowing that essentially, Casey is _his_?

She’s always known their relationship consists in one-upping one another. 

What would he feel if he knew that no matter who wins any other battle, he’s already won the war? 

.

.

.

 **5\. Acceptance**

She remembers one day, her second month in New York. Sitting in a tattoo parlor, the name ‘Derek Venturi’ minutes away from being covered up, the problem once and forever eradicated from her skin. 

She remembers Jesse’s worried look as he held her hand. “Are you sure? Casey, you don’t have to do this.”

She remembers getting sent a picture of a Schnoodle somewhere in Kingston at the last minute, and bolting right out of the chair.

In hindsight, maybe the universe didn’t fuck up so badly when it decided to brand Derek Venturi onto Casey McDonald’s skin. 

She knows something’s different. New York changed everything. For her, and for him too, she can tell. She sees it in his eyes, every time he looks at her for a little too long.

She’s not running away from what she feels for him anymore.

Casey’s not sure when it happens, when she finally decides she’s tired of fighting with herself and just gives in. She just knows that she’s not afraid of what he’ll think when he knows about the mark, she somehow has a feeling that he won’t be too disgruntled. 

She wonders if one day, her name will appear on his skin. She has hope, but she’s not too worried about it. She’s pretty sure it’s her, anyway.

So she enjoys it, his company. His laughter, his glances, the way he pauses and she thinks he’s about to say it, only to back out at the last second.

She’s patient, she knows he will give in, eventually.

She waits for him to catch up to her.

Casey’s always suspected that Derek’s less evolved than her, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it <3 
> 
> -Mey


End file.
